Well, my empeg is having IDE problems again. The age old
Probing primary interface...
Probing primary interface...
empeg-flash driver initialized

(not finding the drive) issue. I had a similar problem about a year ago, resolderd the IDE head, was still flaky while I had it out of the case, put it back together and it just magically worked. See previous thread of mine. It has been working since. Until last night, the night before I was supposed to drive to phoenix, of course. I was mucking around with it last night for a while, without avail. Re-soldered the IDE header again, no love. Then I saw something weird. You'll notice that two of the pins on the cs4231a chip are bridged. This looks like it was a factory thing, because there's no way I could've done that neat of a job on a screw up. So I don't know if this is contributing to my problem or not, because things have apparently been working with it. But the thing I don't know is if this chip is also the IDE controller?

Full boot log, you'll see that the chip is being initialized properly.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 (hugo@empeg.com)
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kernel.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg52-hijack-v422 (hijack@rtr.ca) (gcc version
2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Mon Apr 4 22:44:52 EDT 2005
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: wrote ffffffff, read e91ba9f0
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 30103020) 16MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15008k/16M available (984k code, 20k reserved, 368k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 636f6972 'rioc'
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0004400).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
Probing primary interface...
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman (erik@vt.edu)

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:26:0b:cc
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump..........½Ñ.½....ɽ½Ñ....¥.....é..)5ÿKernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05

Here are all of the pictures I've taken of various things, including the IDE header.

I'm hesitant to try and undo the solder bridge on the cs4231a chip, I may screw it up unnecesarilly, so if anyone has thoughts on that..

In the mean time, I'll re-solder the IDE header again, I really do not want to go on a 12 hour road trip without music

Edit: fixed a link -wfaulk

As I remember, that bridge is intentional.

Will do, I'll leave that alone. But I did go over the IDE header several times to no avail. Even went so far as to push them to make sure that the pads were in fact making contact with the surface. However, in this process of pushing them, many of them did move, so I had to bend the leads back so that I could attach the cable, but this seemed to keep pulling the pads back, because I'd go over it again with the soldering iron, and they'd move some more. I kept screwing with it, tried to put the cable back on, and one of the leads was a bit too far out, so pushing the cable on, this one lead was bent all the way over. I pushed it back, and it snapped. Someone up there does not want me to go on this road trip. I added a couple more photos of my hack job just to get the bloody thing working.

Still in progress..

Any other thoughts other than the IDE header?

Bad cable.

I should've put more info in the original post, I apologize.

I did purchase a spare IDE cable, and swapping that out as well as re-pressing the crimp as well as swapping the drives out, same result.

My horrible hack for the snapped pin isn't working either. I just went to Fry's to see if they had something I could use to replace the whole IDE head, but as I'm sure most everyone knows, something like that just doesn't seem to be readily available.

I wonder how much a 40g iPod costs :/

Hang on, you've broken a pin off the main board IDE header? I thought you'd broken a connector from the way you described it. Which pin is broken?

You are not going to get a replacement header rail from Frys. I have spares here, but you'd have to send me the board.

Just looked at your pictures again: you're in trouble. The broken pin is a data line.